Retrospective And a Question/ Lab-Grown Meat is Coming/ Can VR Art Help Us See the Real World Differently/Terahertz Laser Are About to Have a Moment

Retrospective. This week the Antidisciplinarian turns 100. Measured in years it would be a century, but given its weekly nature, it makes for “only” two years. Still, two years is a long period of time, and I am just realizing that I started just before the pandemic began. Basically, the Antidisciplinarian has been my companion through it…

One thing that I learned to appreciate, both as an individual and also working with teams, is the importance of “retrospectives”. Too often we keep on pushing forward and move to the next thing, project, adventure without pausing to reflect and learn from what has happened. And even more often we do not pause in between to reflect and learn from what is going on.

The form of the retrospective exercise usually varies from team to team, but is usually centered on three questions, one version of the questions is: “what worked?” “what didn’t work?” and “what could be better?”, another version is “stop/continue/change”.??Let’s start with the first version and then give a different spin to the second one.

“What worked?”: when I got started, I decided to do it mostly for myself, to have the discipline every week to put on paper some of my thoughts and some of the most interesting content I saw around. I think I can claim mission accomplished here. I didn’t miss any single beat and have been publishing every single week (except for Christmas) for two years! Also, the forcing mechanism of having to write around 600 words every week has helped me sharpen my thinking on several matters.

“What didn’t work?”: Initially, I thought I could publish the weekly issues and then augment them during the week with specific deep dives on topics, but never managed to get to it. Also, I told myself several times that I should change/improve the layout, and, last but not least, initially I gave myself the target of 10.000+ subscribers and have been stuck around 5.500 for a while now…

“What could be better?”: multiple things I suspect, starting from the quality of the “editorials” and some of the choices of the article selected… but the one thing I personally wish myself the most is being able to have more of a dialogue/more engagement from you, the readers. Some of you did comment and some even contributed to an issue, but still, ideally, it would be great if there were more of…

Ultimately, I have achieved what I had set up myself for, and it has been not without a price, as it has eaten a good chunk of my weekends over the last two years. So, the very legitimate question, at this stage, is: “Should I “stop/continue/change” the Antidisciplinarian?”. And in case I should continue: “What should I “stop/continue/change” with the Antidisciplinarian?”

I would be very thankful if you could help me answer these questions, by sending me your input, feedback, or even a signal that you appreciate and enjoy the newsletter, in whatever form you deem most appropriate. Based on the quantity and quality of the feedback received I will decide whether to continue with the Antidisciplinarian and, if to continue, then in which form.

Regardless of what the future of the Antidisciplinarian is going to look like, a sincere thank you to all of you, for having been part of the journey!!

Lab-Grown Meat Is Coming to Your Fridge This Year

Mosa Meat?recently announced?a solution to one of the biggest challenges facing lab-grown meat production. Cultivated meat typically uses ?Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS).?Studies have shown?that the blood of up to 333 cow fetuses is required to produce a single burger, raising grave animal welfare concerns. A ?recent paper?from Mosa documents how it “removed FBS and other animal components” from its meat cultivation process.

According to Maarten Bosch, CEO at Mosa: “Although the decision to publish this information could be seen as competitively sensitive, we highly value openness and transparency for the advancement of the entire cellular agriculture field.”

In another significant development, UPSIDE Foods recently opened a meat cultivation plant called ?EPIC?near Berkeley, CA. ?According to?Uma Valeti, Founder and CEO at UPSIDE: “EPIC is UPSIDE’s first major production facility: 53,000 square feet of meat-making promise. [It’s] now capable of producing 50,000 pounds of finished product each year with an eventual annual capacity of over 400,000 pounds.”

UPSIDE has raised over $200M from investors like Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and even Tyson Foods.

News items:

New Polymer Twice as Strong as Steel at a Fraction of Its Density

MIT researchers?have created a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets with a yield strength twice that of steel, even though the material only has about one-sixth of its density.?Applications for the lightweight material include everything from durable coatings for car parts or smartphones to building materials for bridges or other large load-bearing structures.?

Why Multi-Chip GPUs Are the Future of Graphics Power

Recent leaks?suggest that Intel is developing ?multi-chip module (MCM)?graphics cards, and ?AMD is rumored?to be including MCMs?in its upcoming Radeon RX 7000 GPUs. MCM GPUS - such as AMD’s “monstrous ?Instinct MI200, designed for high-performance applications like data centers” are already in production. But, if the rumors are true, consumer MCM GPUs may hit the market this year. Nvidia’s “next-gen ?Hopper?graphics cards (are also expected to) feature multi-chip GPU designs.”

According to Digital Trends: MCMs “could potentially result in a lot more GPU power without drastically increasing the size of the chip, thus hopefully improving manufacturability and power consumption.”

News items:

15 Monkeys Have Reportedly Died While Testing Elon Musk's Midlife Crisis Brain Chip

Elon Musk has made many ?bold claims?about ?Neuralink?- the “brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers.” But if ?recent allegations by PCRM?are true, the cyborg revolution may have to wait. 15 out of 22 monkeys implanted with Neuralinks died in testing at UC Davis while undergoing “extreme suffering,” with both physical and neurological side effects reported - including self-harming behavior.

Terahertz Lasers Are About to Have a Moment

A research team at ?Harvard SEAS?recently “demonstrated?a terahertz laser that is compact, operational at room temperature, and widely tunable.” According to ?Henry Everitt, Senior Technologist at ?US Army DEVCOM, microwave radiation technology is “very mature,” but developing tech in the higher terahertz frequency has proven elusive. The SEAS terahertz laser Everitt helped develop is highly portable: “You could put the whole thing in a shoebox,” and IEEE notes that “terahertz frequencies are highly sought after for their numerous potential applications.”

According to Everitt: “I guarantee you that when the terahertz technology matures, there will be a lot of interest in exploiting it.” Once partners from industry emerge, Everitt says, “I think the sky’s the limit.” Potential applications include high-bandwidth communications and high-resolution radar.

News items:

Following the Money in the Air-Taxi Craze

250+ startups worldwide?are vying to create viable electrically-powered vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft - commonly referred to as air-taxis. The top seven public companies - including market leader ?Joby Aviation?- have raised $5B in funding. So, “are we on the verge of a stunning revolution in urban transportation, or are we witnessing, as aviation analyst? Richard Aboulafia?puts it, the ‘mother of all aerospace bubbles’?”

Can VR Art Help Us See the Real World Differently?

Vox surveys Sundance’s recent ?New Frontier?exhibition and concludes: “VR is a unique space in which to create art.” Highlights included two documentaries: ?We Met in Virtual Reality?- about real-life relationships forged in VR - and ?This is Not a Ceremony?- which explores “the darker sides of living life in Canada while Indigenous.” According to ?Alissa Wilkinson, Film Critic at Vox:

“Using VR to help audiences re-situate themselves in space and time might be able to change the way they see the world. And in the end, that’s what the art that lingers in our subconscious — like a dream with some insight for us to attend to — can do best.”

News items:

Language Is The Next Great Frontier In AI

According to ?Rob Toews, Partner at Radical Ventures: “Language is at the heart of human intelligence. No sophisticated AI can exist without mastery of language.” Overlooking natural language innovation from Turing to OpenAI’s GPT-3 and ?Codex, Toews concludes: “Today, the field of language AI is at an exhilarating inflection point, on the cusp of transforming industries and spawning new multi-billion-dollar companies. At the same time, it is fraught with societal dangers like bias and toxicity that are only now starting to get the attention they deserve.”

Can Algorithmic Recommendation Systems Be Good for Democracy?

The?engagement-based ranking systems?used by Facebook, YouTube, and many other social media platforms have been ?much maligned?in recent years. By showing people more of what they “like,” such platforms have been ?accusedof creating ?echo chambers?full of misinformation and intolerance.

According to ?Aviv Ovadya, Founder at ?Thoughtful Technology Project: “Sensationalist and divisive content... leads to the most engagement. This is potentially very dangerous for democratic stability - if things get too divisive, the social contract supporting democracy can falter, potentially leading to internal warfare.”

But Ovadya doesn’t favor “copout” solutions - like chronological feeds - to the problems created by engagement-based algorithms, saying, “We can do better.” He explores alternative ranking systems like “bridging-based ranking” to “explicitly counter... sensationalism... {and] level the initial playing field [so] that complexity and nuance have a fighting chance.”

According to Ovadya: “Bridging-based ranking would reward the ideas and policies that can help bridge divides in our everyday lives, beyond just online platforms.”

News items:

Salesforce Empowered an AI Ethics Team to Keep It Honest. Dealing With Third-Party Apps Is Trickier.

An interview with ?Kathy Baker, Principal Architect, Ethical AI Practice at Salesforce and the challenges of maintaining Ethics by Design. Baker shares her team’s internal debates with “product management decision-makers” and how they deal with “third-party technologies living on the Salesforce platform that they simply cannot inspect.”